Day 190 Flower Hatch

Saturday 14 Feb 2009

The three of us go to mercado but we’re a half an hour later than usual and it makes a huge difference in numbers of people we have to wade through; we’re almost a half an hour in the carniceria. After dry foods at Andy, when the ‘girls’ start shopping for fresh vegetables, I whisper to Teri, “I want to get you and Yobani flowers for Dia de la Amistad (Day of the Friendship),” and she says, “That would be sweet, they’re way at the other end of this row.”

There are four stalls together and I walk up to one that has a lot of fresh roses out front with some beautiful bouquets displayed. The woman tries to sell me a long-thin box with a long clear plastic window in it where she will place one, two, or three roses; the boxes are red, white, and pink in color—this seems to be a popular method of gifting flowers in Piura as I see a couple of men buying them at adjacent stalls. I politely ask the cost of these even though the idea doesn’t appeal to me (five soles + two soles per rose). I ask the price of a gorgeous dozen-rose bouquet (25 soles), but discover it’s in a very shallow vase and I like to see long-stemmed roses in a tall vase with water, not soil—also, I find I have only 20 soles in my pocket.

I opt for six roses, two red, two white, and two white with a red line at the tip of each petal; she adds baby’s-breath (gypsophila), a few pink carnations, some wheat stalks, and other greenery and wraps it all in clear plastic—10 soles. I don’t think roses will be appropriate for Yobani and, luckily, I see some readymade bouquets of perhaps 30 red/white carnations mixed with a similar amount in volume of white daisy-like flowers at the adjacent stall so I buy one of those for Yobani—three soles. I sneak up behind my two girls and when they turn around I hand them their flowers saying, “Por mi Amor y por mi Chica.” I’m rewarded with big grins from each of them and then they hand them back to me to hold while they continue shopping.

At the end of the day Yobani and her sister, Flor, who I learn is now working in Piura (the last I heard she was in Lima), leave for a party around 6:00 and Teri and I take a walk. I want to go by the construction site to see if they’re pouring concrete again tonight and Teri wants to go by Cossto to buy chocolate to have with the bottle of red wine she suggested we refrigerate a bit while we walk—oh yes, she knows the way to my heart.

The site is silent as I thought it would be; they probably worked until they finished the pour last night no matter how long it took. At Cossto there’s no sign of flying insects, or even dead ones for that matter, other than a few outside swarming around the street lights. So last night’s hoards of insects must have been a freak occurrence—I bet we just happened to walk into a new hatch—whew!